This is What Kristen Bell Looks Like with an ’80s Mullet

Childhood was a weird time for all of us. No matter how easily—or terribly—you sailed through it, we can pretty much guarantee you looked awkward at least twice: Maybe there was a time when all of your front teeth were missing, or your feet were too big for your body, or, in Kristen Bell’s case, when your mother cut your hair into a mullet to make you look more like a boy.

And no, we’re not just being mean or gender-normative. On “The Late Late Show” this week, Kristen Bell revealed that her mom gave her a mullet haircut when she was a kid so she really would “fit in with the boys” on her all-boy baseball team. “My mother made sure that I wouldn’t take any flak from anybody, because she gave me a real disastrous sort of haircut to make sure I fit in,” said Bell, as James Corden pulled out a photo of Bell’s mullet. “She took the bangs past the ear, past the forehead, past the ear, all the way down to the back, which I believe we now call a mullet. But I was one of the first.”

“She basically made you look like the kid from Jerry Maguire,” said Corden. (Which, we might add, is kind of a compliment, because that little boy from Jerry Maguire was literally the cutest child in the history of the ‘90s. He did not go through an awkward phase. He was perfection.)

But, regardless of how little Bell looked, her mom’s ploy worked. “I never had any problems because everyone thought I was one of the little boys,” responded Bell. “I was pretty scrappy.”